ActionSA is disrupting politics – Herman Mashaba unveils party’s candidate election system

Mashaba’s new party is committed to handing political power back to residents.

Earlier this month, ActionSA launched a groundbreaking Candidate Elections process and online system, based on the concept of direct democracy. The system, which is currently open for registrations, will be used to elect ActionSA’s candidates for Ward Councillors and Mayors ahead of the Local Government Elections scheduled for the 27^th of October this year. In doing so, ActionSA aims to take political power away from political parties and put it firmly back in the hands of residents.

ActionSA was formed in August 2020 by the former Mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, to ‘change the direction of South Africa by providing a credible alternative to a broken political system that has failed South Africans for many years since the dawn of South Africa’s democracy’. Its focus is on Action that moves South Africa forward from ‘an era of broken promises, corruption and failed government’.

ActionSA stands for seven core values: Non-racialism; Economic Prosperity; Respect for the Rule of Law; Social Justice; Quality Education; Ethical Leadership & Public Service; and Electoral Reform.

These values were informed by a widescale public engagement process undertaken by Mashaba and his team following his resignation as Mayor in October 2019. One value, Electoral Reform, is now being put into action by the party through their Candidate Election system.

The system allows residents of municipalities and wards that ActionSA intends to contest to elect their own candidates for those wards through Direct Candidate Elections. This is like Primary Elections held in countries such as the United States of America.

ActionSA explains that they introduced this system to overcome the failings of political parties that force candidates on communities using the party-list system, often with little to no input from the communities those candidates are supposed to serve.

As Herman Mashaba explained, “Every other political party operates off a model where you give them your votes and they give you the candidate that it suits them to give you. They don’t give you the candidate that will serve you best; they don’t give you the hardest working or the most experienced candidate. They give you someone who is loyal to the party first, and the voters second. We want to change this.”

ActionSA unveiled its revolutionary Candidate Elections system on the 13^th of April, calling for both aspiring candidates and voters to register through an online platform available at actionsa.org.za/register

Any resident of Johannesburg, Tshwane or Ekurhuleni can register to participate in this process. Candidates will campaign in the wards to win the support of their residents and, ultimately, in the final election.

While aspiring candidates must be members of ActionSA and meet the rigorous criteria set by the party, ActionSA notes that any registered voter can sign up to participate in the Candidate Elections themselves. Voters in the Candidate Elections do not need to be members of ActionSA.

Michael Beaumont, Chairperson of ActionSA, explains that this was done to ensure that the party’s Candidate Elections are as open and inclusive as possible: “Ward Councillors are not elected only to serve members of the party on whose platform they got elected; they are meant to serve the entire community of their ward. For this reason, we believe that an entire ward should have a voice in deciding who the ActionSA candidate should be.”

Not only is ActionSA a rapidly growing new political party, disrupting traditional candidate selection processes, they are also pioneering online voting in a country where the IEC’s ability to produce indelible ink pens and sufficient ballot papers has been an issue in 2019.

ActionSA’s system of electing candidates will also be used as a performance management tool. Rather than bothering with ticking boxes and KPIs for their public representatives, ActionSA is going to use the same online system to measure resident satisfaction with their elected councillor.

Effectively, ActionSA will use the system to hold mid-term referendums on the performance of their councillors, given residents an opportunity to express their satisfaction directly. When that level of satisfaction is low, ActionSA will remove that councillor and use the very same system to identify a better alternative.

Mashaba emphasised that this initiative is about making public representatives more accountable to their communities, in order to ‘unseat those who have failed us and put in place a new alternative that will take South Africa forward’.

“Millions of South Africans have given up on voting because they don’t believe that political parties serve them. ActionSA is starting something brave and bold, but something which can change the order of politics in our country. We believe in replacing words with Actions and offering hope where our current political system has instead only brought about despair. We are committed to putting political power back in the hands of ordinary South Africans, and away from the selfish, criminal and corrupt political parties that have failed us so dismally.”